


Maybe

by languageintostillair



Series: After an Almost [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Cersei Lannister and Jaime Lannister Are Not Related, F/M, Fluff, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Post-Break Up, a friend break-up etc you get the drift, but guess what there's also a little bit of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23184514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageintostillair/pseuds/languageintostillair
Summary: She wore the sweater to bed. And let him see that she wore it to bed. But that was—that was weakness. A coping mechanism, that was all. Brienne had done that without thinking it through. But she’s thoughtthisdecision through, hundreds, thousands of times. It’s better if she lets him go.Jaime’s next message makes her want to throw her phone against the wall.You want to run. That’s not the same as letting go.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Series: After an Almost [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1662541
Comments: 83
Kudos: 208





	Maybe

In hindsight, Brienne doesn’t know what exactly possessed her to do it. Foolishness, maybe.

Logically, it shouldn’t have helped her sleep any better. Jaime—thinking of Jaime—thinking of things that her mind found some way to link back to Jaime— _that_ was the cause of her insomnia. So really, the solution should have been to push all the thoughts of Jaime out of her head. It should have had nothing to do with him at all.

But she’d let Jaime sleep in the bedroom across the hallway. There was no escaping someone sleeping in the bedroom across the hallway. No chance of severing him from her mind, when she could barely sever him from her life. She’d tried, and failed.

After an hour of tossing and turning, something inside her told her there was no harm in trying. Maybe it would help. It had helped before—before Winterfell. Before she’d let him keep it at his apartment, and the few times after when she remembered to bring it home. She’d found herself thinking of it on sleepless nights in the North, even when she was sleepless for reasons other than Jaime.

So Brienne took the sweater out of her closet—it had taken two days, but she’d hung it up eventually—and wore it to bed. The sweater that’s the softest thing in the world. The sweater that smells of Jaime’s apartment. Of him.

She had been right about that.

She did fall asleep soon after, but she put that down to exhaustion, from—from everything. From everything that had led up to Jaime sleeping in the bedroom across the hallway. And while she did sleep, she didn’t sleep _well_. So the sweater didn’t really help in that respect.

It’s nice to have it back, though. This sweater that smells of Jaime.

When she wakes in the morning, she’s parched. Jaime had done the bulk of the talking the night before, but she still feels like it was the most she’d ever spoken in one sitting. She may not have said all the things that ran through her head, but she still feels as if she’d spoken them out loud. She had been so quick to hide herself in her room, however, that she hadn’t had a chance to get a drink of water before bed.

Still, she lies beneath the covers for quite a while—her fingers wringing the edge of her sweater—before finally deciding to get up. Admittedly, she’d been listening out for Jaime, for any sounds of him moving around outside, or in his—no, _damn it_ , in the _guest_ room. She doesn’t feel ready to face him again. Even after she gets out of bed, she takes her time in the bathroom, brushes her teeth at an excruciatingly slow pace, even contemplates drinking the tap water from her bathroom sink so she can hide in her room a while longer. But she tells herself she’s being ridiculous. She hasn’t heard anything—and she’d have heard if he’d opened his door—so it should be safe to go to the kitchen. She opens her own door as quietly as she can, creeps down the hallway, and when she turns the corner—

he’s there.

Seated at her small dining table, just big enough for four, but more comfortable for two. With a cup of tea in his hands.

His eyes widen a little when he sees her; she must look a mess, having just rolled out of bed. But then he simply says, “Morning,” and lifts the cup. “I helped myself. Hope that’s okay.”

“Oh.” She doesn’t say _morning_ in return. Not even _that’s fine_. Just _oh._

The early morning sunlight is streaming in through the window, and hitting Jaime just right. It’s picking out all the gold in his hair, and some of the grey, too. There isn’t much of that, but what’s there now wasn’t there two years ago. As he shifts his arms, she sees how her t-shirt fits him better than it had ever fit her, and feels faintly jealous. Involuntarily, her eyes travel to his left hand again. No ring. From this distance, she can’t even see the tan line. It’s as if the day she had bumped into him outside his office building—it’s as if it was all a dream. He’d never married someone else. She’d never left for Winterfell. Two years ago, she’d told him how she felt, and they’d—

No. _That_ is the dream. It didn’t happen that way.

Jaime places his cup back on the table, and moves to stand. “I’ll put the kettle back on. I—I’ve been here a while.”

Of all the things that could have broken her, she never thought it would be _this_.

She runs back to her room before Jaime can see her fall apart. She closes the door, backs against it, slides down until she’s sitting on the floor. She puts her head in her hands, in her knees. This— _this_ is what makes her cry, out of everything that’s unfolded in the past week. It’s nonsensical. This scene of Jaime, sitting at her dining table in the morning, a cup of tea in his hands, the sunlight picking out the gold in his hair, and the grey. It feels so close to what she had wanted—what she hadn’t truly allowed herself to want for all this time. Worse, it reminds her of the mornings after the nights Jaime had spent in her apartment, back when they were still friends. It reminds her of how close they’d been. How good it had felt, to be that close to someone. How safe it had been, to not be too close.

How that had hurt too.

As she struggles to wipe the tears out of her eyes, she looks down and— _fuck_. She’s wearing the sweater. She’d worn the sweater to sleep, and then worn it out into the kitchen, only for Jaime to see her in it. The sweater that she’d bought while with him. The sweater she’d let him wear sometimes, then keep at his apartment. The sweater she’d left behind, and came back for.

The sweater that smells of Jaime.

That’s why his eyes had widened when he saw her just now. It wasn’t that she’d looked a mess. It’s that she was _wearing the sweater_.

_Fuck._

She’d given Jaime the answer to, _tell me you don’t miss me_.

There’s a soft knock at the door. “Brienne.”

She paws at her eyes—now her fingers are all wet with tears too—and wipes her nose on the back of her hand. “Go away,” she croaks. It’s childish, but she doesn’t have it in her to be anything other than childish right now.

“… Away from this door? Or do you want me to leave?”

She can’t bring herself to answer, and a few moments later, she hears Jaime walk away and into the guest room. Some time later, she hears him come back out again. Maybe he got his things. Maybe he’ll leave, without her having to say a word. But from the sound of it, he doesn’t seem to be leaving, or doing much else. She could have sworn he stopped right outside her door again, but he isn’t saying a thing.

Then, she hears the floor creak, and a thud. It’s not the thud of footsteps—it’s something heavier. Just behind her head, there’s a knock on the door again. No—it’s a soft thump. It’s the sound of the back of a head making contact with the wood.

Oh. He’s sitting on the other side of the door.

A few seconds later, she hears her phone buzz.

She stretches over to grab it from her bedside table, and—it’s a message from Jaime. Jaime, who’s on the other side of her bedroom door.

**Is this better? Talking like this?**

Brienne doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t know what ‘better’ could be. Every possible version of this never-ending conversation feels equally painful. Even if done over text, without having to face him, see him, hear him. Touch him. She thinks of his hand around her wrist yesterday.

A while later, her phone vibrates again.

**I don’t have anywhere to be today. But I’ll leave if you want me to.**

Soon after: **Do you want me to?**

When she types out her reply, she ignores all of his questions. She sends him one instead.

**Why won’t you let this go?**

She can hear him sigh through the door. He’d told her already, that he wanted her in his life again, but she’d never actually asked him this particular question. _Why?_ On her phone screen, the bubble with the three dots appears, disappears, appears.

Finally: **Because I don’t think I should. But I’d try, if I thought that you wanted to.**

Then: **Really wanted to.**

Her knee-jerk reaction is to—to _seethe_. _Fuck him_ , she thinks yet again, and likely not for the last time. She might have hidden her feelings from him back then, but that doesn’t mean he has the right to disbelieve the words that come out of her mouth. He has no right to disregard them, to wave them away, just like that. **I told you I do,** she types furiously. **I want to let this go.**

She also wore the sweater to bed. And let him see that she wore it to bed. But that was—that was weakness. A coping mechanism, that was all. Brienne had done that without thinking it through. But she’s thought _this_ decision through, hundreds, thousands of times. It’s better if she lets him go.

Jaime’s next message makes her want to throw her phone against the wall.

**You want to run. That’s not the same as letting go.**

Isn’t it? She’ll run, and she’ll hide—she’s already done both of those things—and then she’ll let go of him, eventually. But as she says that in her head, with her eyes on Jaime’s words, she sees that he’s right. Those are two separate things, no matter how desperately she wants to connect them. One does not logically follow from the other. Perhaps it’s something she already knew, and hadn’t wanted to recognise. But the fact is, even after two years, letting-go-of-Jaime wasn’t something she could achieve without running, and running, and running.

But that means… It takes her a while to figure out how to phrase it, and she can hear Jaime shift on the other side of the door—he must be staring at the bubble too, the bubble with the three dots.

**What if we’re just holding on to something for longer than we should?**

When she hits send, she realises she’s not even sure what that _something_ is. What did they have before? Friendship? But neither of them wants that anymore. What are they holding onto then, in each other?

Is it enough if what they’re holding onto is just—each other?

Jaime’s reply comes quicker than she expects. **I’ve done that already. I don’t think this feels the same.**

_Cersei._

**How is it different?** she asks. It’s the most direct question she’s ever asked about Cersei, and she braces herself for the answer.

But Jaime doesn’t elaborate much. His next message only says: **I don’t know how to describe it. It’s just a feeling.**

And: **I guess I won’t really know until we try.**

Is that enough? Jaime’s _just a feeling_? Brienne hardly knows herself what she wants. Is the little she knows enough for her to try? She’s never really allowed herself to try before, and this—with Jaime—it would carry so much of the pain that she’d accumulated over the years. She’d folded all this trauma into him, trauma that might have nothing to do with him at all, unfair as that may have been. How can she protect herself now?

Who is she protecting herself from?

Jaime hadn’t known _not_ to hurt her. She’d kept her feelings from him, guarded them so diligently behind a veneer of friendship. But she’d felt all the pain as if he _did_ inflict it. All the pain that—that she’d _imagined_ he’d inflict. Inflicting that on herself—it was easier than letting him actually do it. Because she believed he would, if he knew.

So—if they do try—how will she protect herself from _herself_?

Her phone buzzes again. **Are you still there?**

The texting isn’t working, she realises. It’s safer, less unstable, but—it’s too easy for her to retreat into these conversations inside her head. It’s too easy for her to hurt herself.

She doesn’t want to do that. She’d resolved not to do that, in those two years in Winterfell.

Brienne gets up from the floor then, takes a deep breath, and opens the—

“Wha—”

door.

“Ow—Fuck—”

Shit. She forgot to give Jaime a warning. She forgot he was sitting with his back against the other side of her door.

“Oh gods.” She still has one hand on the doorknob, and she’s just staring down at Jaime, who’s managed to break his fall with one forearm. “I’m so sorry.”

She’s about to help him up, but before she can move to do so, Jaime just lets himself fall backwards onto the floor.

Then, he begins to laugh.

“What are you _doing_?” she asks, and she can feel herself begin to laugh too.

“This—this is not how I thought I’d enter this room again.”

Her laugh dies in her throat, and she can feel her cheeks heating up already. It’s not that Jaime hadn’t been in her room before, but she’d always been careful to keep those visits short and perfunctory. And the way he just said that sentence—the connotations of it—

Jaime’s stopped laughing too. He’s just looking up at her, from where he’s lying on the floor. Not just looking. _Staring_.

“Stop,” she whispers, and takes a few steps away from him.

“Sorry.” He sits up again, spins around, crosses his legs. Just beyond the threshold of her room. “No.” He runs one hand through his hair. “I’m not sorry.”

She thinks he’s not-sorry for much more than just staring, but doesn’t ask him to clarify that. Instead, she sighs, walks back to the doorway, and sits down on the floor again. Jaime looks almost surprised. They face each other, divided by the invisible line that defines the entrance to her room. Divided by an open door.

“How’s your hand?” she says first, lifting a finger towards his right. He’d injured it in a stupid accident at the gym, a few months before she left. At the time, she’d been so paranoid that he’d lose the whole thing. She can still see the image of the X-ray in her mind. The breaks, and fractures. She would have asked about it at the cafe yesterday, but things had gone south so quickly.

“Better. Much better. Pretty much back to normal.”

He offers it out to her, and after a moment’s hesitation, she takes it. Runs her thumbs over his fingers, his knuckles, the back of his hand. Feels the flesh of his palm. Its warmth.

He laughs again, softly now. “I could never figure you out.”

“Hmm?”

“You were always so gentle, in some ways. Like now. But so rough with me in others. In the way you spoke.”

She wants to tell him why. She wants to tell him that she understands now, that the roughness was just a way for her to push him away. To push herself away from him. It was a sort of armour, though it didn’t do much good in the end.

But all she says is, “I know. I’m sorry.”

She releases his hand, and watches as he interlaces his fingers, just like he did last night on the couch. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asks. “Until you did?”

“I don’t know.” She keeps her eyes fixed on his hands. “It’s silly. I was—maybe I kept waiting for—for more of a sign that you’d say yes. Because I… I didn’t want to hear you say no.”

“And then I did.”

“And then you did.”

It was silly. Illogical. She hadn’t given him a chance to say yes, because she couldn’t bear the possibility that he’d say no. In fact, the more she’d wanted him to say yes, the more she’d hid how she really felt. Like she’d wanted him to say no after all.

And then he did.

She bites down hard on her lip, then lets it slip from her teeth. “Would… would you have said yes?” she murmurs. “At any point?”

“I—I don’t know. I was—I wasn’t with her for most of the time we were friends. Or I was, in the sense that—she’d ask, and I’d go back and… I don’t know.”

“But you said…” _He’d said—_ “I never gave you the chance. You implied—”

“I did. But maybe—maybe I’d have fucked it up anyway. If I’d taken the chance then. If you’d given it to me. I was still… her creature.”

It’s grotesque, the way he describes it. Brienne has to ask him about Cersei now—about why he withheld her—or she may never do it. “Why didn’t you… why didn’t you ever talk about her?”

This time, she can taste the bitterness of Jaime’s laugh in her own mouth. “I think—deep down I knew. There was this poison in it. I didn’t want to believe it, that something that had been part of my life for so long could be so… so _toxic_. But I knew what you would say. And I didn’t want to hear it, even though it probably would have been the truth.” He presses the pads of his thumbs together, with so much strength that they tremble. “And maybe I—I didn’t want you to—to think badly of me. I think… that might have killed me.”

“ _Jaime_.”

“Dramatic, I know. In a way, I suppose I—I didn’t want you to say no to me too.” He separates his hands then, and pushes the tips of his fingers into the floor. “I used to think it would kill me, if I could no longer have her.” One finger runs itself along that invisible line, the one that defines the entrance to her room. “Well. She’s not in my life anymore.”

 _I want you in my life again_ , he’d said last night. But she’s not sure how much she can give him, what version of herself. Maybe the Brienne he wants—maybe she never existed.

“I don’t know how to—to do this,” Brienne confesses. “ _Any_ of this. I don’t know if I _can_. I’ve never—”

“Not even in Winterfell?” Jaime interjects.

It’s pathetic, at her age, but— “No.” It was so easy not to, in a place where she hardly knew anyone.

“I thought you might have taken up with some, I don’t know, some descendant of a Wildling. And forgotten about me.”

She’s the one that laughs now. “I could never.”

“You have something against Wildlings?”

“No! It’s not. I just meant.” She’d meant—she could never forget him. But she can’t bring herself to say it.

She thinks Jaime already knows, anyway.

“You know. I—I’ve never done this too,” he says, fingers tapping the floor. “You’re not the only one.”

 _What is he—_ “You’ve been _married_ , Jaime.”

“Yes, but—I’ve never… This is different. Trying to… to make something out of, of whatever this is.” He pauses. “Assuming that’s something you’d be open to.”

She still can’t give him an answer. The answer is— “I don’t know.”

He sighs. “What’s stopping you? What are you afraid of, Brienne?”

She can only repeat herself. “I don’t know.”

“You know there’s—there’s no one else,” he says, imploring. “You know that I… you know that I have—you don’t have to, to worry about me saying no. And we can go as slow as you like. So—what else do you need? What else do I have to do?”

 _I don’t know._ But she feels stupid, saying it again, so she doesn’t.

“Unless…” Jaime continues, “you’re not interested in _me_.”

 _Interested_. It’s such a meagre word, for how she felt about Jaime back then. How she feels about him even now. Hells, she can’t even look in his eyes, though she’s been sitting across from him all this while. What is she afraid of? What else does she need?

“What if,” she tries to explain, and once she says those words— _what if_ —she realises there are ten, a hundred, a thousand ways to complete the question, and she knows she should stop— _think_ —but she just lets them all pour out of her, asking _what if we’re just living in the past? What if everything I’m feeling now—what if all of these feelings are just regrets? What if it isn’t_ interest _, but just wishing that things could have been different? What if I can’t help but resent you, for things that we can’t change now? All those things from before? What if we end up hating each other? What if, after all of that, it’s still—_

She has to clap her hands over her mouth then, to keep more _what-ifs_ from falling out. She’d said far too much, and it was still only a fraction of all the _what-ifs_ in her mind, of all the ten, a hundred, a thousand ways to complete the question. Then she feels, all of a sudden, that all those ways are utterly pointless, because they’re just a thousand ways of asking the same thing—the same question that has no answer. That’s what _what-ifs_ are, aren’t they? Questions that have no answers?

Jaime isn’t saying anything. His silence is—it’s _debilitating_ , and there aren’t any _what-ifs_ in her mind any longer, there is only: _I’ve done it now_. She’d said, and asked, far too much—far too much, surely, for _what else do you need?_ —and _this_ is the only version of herself she can give, this rambling, anxious, mess of a person, barely even a person, and it’s finally scared him away. Just when he was so ready to offer himself to her.

Then, he says: “I could ask myself the same.”

She lets her hands fall into her lap. “What?”

“All of that. I could ask all of that too. I’ve asked myself all of it.”

Slowly, she sees his hands reach towards hers. Her first instinct is to pull them away, but she can’t. She’s paralysed, and shaking, all at once. He brings her hands out of her lap, holds them in the space between them. Over the invisible line.

“What if it’s good?”

She can’t speak.

Jaime traces her knuckles with his thumbs now, just as she had done with his right hand before. “What if it’s good and—we’re good for each other? What if we can learn from the past, and we can _make it good_?”

“Jaime—”

“I won’t—Brienne, I won’t force you to do something you don’t want to do. If you want to let go, I—I won’t stop you. I’m just—there are other _what-ifs_ to ask. _Good_ ones. Ones worth… holding on to.”

As far back as Brienne can remember, it’s always been easier to think of the bad things. To think of all the things that had hurt her, from which she’d had to protect herself, and from which she would still need to protect herself. It’s given her a thousand bad ways to complete her _what-ifs_ , and she’s gotten so used to it that she’d assumed those thousand bad ways were the only ways to ask that question. Thinking of the good things— _hoping_ for them—it feels so dangerous, even now with Jaime before her. It isn’t that good things haven’t happened, or that she doesn’t believe that they _could_ happen. But hope, she’d learned, could make devastation out of disappointment. It had always seemed wiser to avoid that possibility altogether.

For a time, she’d allowed herself the privilege of thinking of the good things with Jaime. To ask that very same question he’d just asked— _what if it’s good?_ But she’d held it in her mind, nursed it, let herself feel some tiny measure of joy from this unanswered question. And then, when she was finally ready to ask it out loud, things… happened the way they did.

But he’s holding her hands now. He’s telling her it could be good, between them. And he’d told her he wouldn’t lie to her.

Maybe—maybe she could give it a chance. 

Maybe asking that question _is_ her answer.

There’s something mesmerising about the way their hands are woven around each other, and she thinks she could stare at the sight forever. But she wills herself to lift her head up, finally, and look Jaime in the eye.

“Okay,” she says.

She won’t let go.

**Author's Note:**

> You're welcome.
> 
> I might continue this series because I think it would be interesting to see how their traumas and issues will bubble up in an established relationship, but I think I'll leave this one here for now!
> 
> Thanks as always to [Roccolinde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roccolinde) and [jencat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jencat)! And I’m on [Tumblr](https://shipping-receiving.tumblr.com/)!


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